


if they want you, they're gonna have to fight me

by folignos



Category: Generation Kill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folignos/pseuds/folignos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time it happens, Ray’s not really sure what to do."</p>
            </blockquote>





	if they want you, they're gonna have to fight me

**Author's Note:**

> I started this approx. one million years ago for YAGKYAS. life went crazy, i had to drop out, but i picked it up yesterday and finished it off, and so here you go.  
> title from laura marling's night terror.

The first time it happens, Ray’s not really sure what to do.

He’s awake, of course he’s awake, half drunk coffee wedged by his hip where he sits on the windowsill with a book. It helps to be near a window, he’s found. He doesn’t know why, but if being able to see out across the ocean in the dark [almost dawn, really, he thinks, checking his watch. Just past four am.] helps, then he’s going to sit on the windowsill that makes his hips hurt, and he’s going to look out at the goddamned ocean.

He’s just drifting off to sleep, screw the uncomfortable position, when Walt makes this noise, kind of like a whimper, and for a second Ray thinks he’s having a sex dream again [those are always hilarious and not at all awkward and besides, Ray’s always happy to help out there], but when he tosses his head and the light from the window falls on him, Ray sees his face, all twisted up.

Ray really hopes he doesn’t look like that when he’s having nightmares. Walt’s face twists again, and Ray’s on the bed next to him in a second, because he might not know what to do, but he knows that he can’t watch Walt make those faces anymore, can’t listen to the sounds he’s making, so he holds Walt’s hand, and smooths the hair back off his forehead, and says  _Walt_ , over and over, wanting to wake him up but not wanting to shake him awake, or shout, because Ray knows that if you get shocked out of the dream, it takes that much longer to shake it off. It clings to you for hours afterwards, and you feel like your heart is beating just a little too fast. Suddenly, Walt jerks awake, and his eyes fly open, and he looks at Ray like all he sees is blood and sand. Ray knows because that’s sometimes all he sees too, and it’s something he never wanted Walt to have to deal with. His chest heaves, and his hand tightens around Ray’s until he can feel the bones grinding together, but he stays where he is, waits for Walt’s eyes to focus in, and he blinks, swallows, and tries to even out his breathing. His grip on Ray slackens, but he doesn’t let go, just runs his thumb across the ridge of Ray’s knuckles, over and over, as he closes his eyes and focuses on breathing. Ray sits there for maybe five minutes, sits perfectly still and waits for Walt to open his eyes. It feels like he can breathe again when Walt’s eyes stutter open, and he looks at Ray, and there are goddamn tears in his eyes, and Ray just loses it, falls forward and wraps himself around Walt and buries his head in the join between neck and shoulder, and feels Walt’s arm snake around Ray’s waist. Ray hates this. He hates that something like this can shake Walt, because Walt is _Walt_ , he’s normal, and stable, and Ray’s the fucked up one, it’s common knowledge. Walt is too good, too fucking happy for this shit, but it’s happening, and Ray has no fucking idea what to do. He can feel him shaking, and he presses a kiss onto Walt’s collarbone, lingering. It’s all he can do, all he knows to do, and it just doesn’t feel like enough, so he stays there until Walt stops shaking and Ray can’t feel his pulse trying to jump through his skin anymore, and he slides off to curl into Walt’s side. He doesn’t sleep much that night.

-

The second time it happens, he rings Brad. Not immediately, he’s not stupid, waits for Walt to go back to base, and he rings, pacing through the apartment as it goes to voicemail over and over.

‘What?’ Brad snarls when he picks up on the sixth attempt.

Ray snarks back because he has to, that’s their thing, because he might be fucking Walt and Brad is in epic gay love with his CO, but it was Brad and Ray before it was anyone else, and they’ve been doing this back-and-forth pretend hatred for three years now. ‘Homes, who taught you to answer the phone like that? What if I’d been Mommy Colbert? How well would that have gone down?’

‘What. Do. You. Want.’ Brad says slowly, clearly, and Ray grins reflexively when he hears muffled sounds from the other end of the phone.

‘Dude. Are you in flagrante delicto with the LT? While you’re on the phone with me? You kinky fucker. I  _knew_ you’d be into shit like that.’ He hears  _hang up, Brad_ , distorted but desperate sounding, and Ray knew it. He fucking  _knew it_ , but then Brad says he’s hanging up, and Ray has to back pedal. He’ll torture Brad some other time. ‘Brad.  _Brad._ Walt’s having nightmares.’

Everything on the other end goes muffled and fuzzy, and there’s the sound of scuffling, and just when Ray thinks that Brad’s gone back to Nate’s dick, he hears the owner of said dick. ‘Ray?’

‘LT?’

‘Brad sensed that talking about feelings was inevitable, he’s hiding in the shower. He threw the phone at me and ran.’

Ray hears Brad in the background, _I was not running away, I was making a tactical retreat. You’re the one who deals with this feelings bullshit._ Nate ignores him. ‘So, Walt’s having nightmares?’

‘He says he’s fine,’ Ray says, and he knows he’s avoiding the question, he does, but Nate is obviously not impressed by this answer.

‘That’s a yes. Brad said he was fine too.’

Ray doesn’t even know how to respond to the idea of Brad being anything less than grumpy and stoic, so he files that information away for later, and hopefully it won’t get him killed. Ray wants to die getting his dick sucked, and he’s pretty sure it won’t go down like that if Brad’s involved, and then he realises that he hasn’t said anything in a while, so he blurts out ‘What the fuck do I do about it?’

There’s a couple of seconds pause. Ray can hear movement on the other end, and then a door shutting. ‘What did Walt say, exactly?’

‘Umm,’ Ray says. ‘nothing?’

‘You just said he was fine.’ Nate sounds exasperated.

‘Yeah, no, I asked him about it the next morning, and he said he was fine, and then he ran off to the base while I was in the shower.’

‘So you haven’t talked to him about it?’ Nate’s using that tone of voice he has, the one that means he’s running a hand through his hair and scratching at the back of his scalp.

‘Not exactly,’ Ray says slowly, knowing that Nate’s going to do his exasperated sigh, the one that he normally leaves for when Ray and Walt come over for breakfast and Ray eats all the pineapple out of the fruit salad.

‘You’re going to have to talk about it eventually, you know. You can’t help him if he doesn’t think he needs help.’ Nate sounds stern but sympathetic, and annoyingly, he’s making a lot of sense.

‘Yeah, but it’s Walt,’ Ray says. ‘Whenever he doesn’t want to do something, he distracts me with blowjobs.’

Nate sighs again. ‘Look. You can’t make him talk about it. But he’s going to have to sooner or later. Just…’ Nate pauses. ‘Just be there for him, if he needs you. Don’t shy away. And be aware of the possibility that he might hurt you.’

Ray doesn’t really know what to say to that. ‘It’s Walt,’ he says eventually, because surely that’s argument enough.

‘I know, I know,’ Nate says quickly. ‘And I know he wouldn’t do it on purpose. Just… people aren’t themselves, when they’ve just woken up.’ The line they’re on isn’t great, and Nate’s kind of fuzzy anyway, but there’s a weird tone in his voice, like he knows more than he says. Ray knows part of that is just Nate, who’s default tone is ‘I know best’, but suddenly he’s thinking about bruises on Nate’s wrists and collarbones, purple smudges on his hip that Ray saw by accident last summer, and Ray understands. He understands the dark circles underneath Brad’s eyes, and the way Nate kept a careful distance between the two of them, even when it was just the four of them, drinking beer and watching crappy B-movies.

‘I,’ he starts. ‘Thanks, LT.’

‘Sure, Ray,’ Nate says, and hangs up. Ray looks at the phone for a while, before placing it back in the cradle. He doesn’t do a lot that day. Thinking, mostly. He wanders out to the garage and works on one of the cars he’s repairing, because fuck, he can do that in his sleep, pretty much. Minimum brainpower required.

And then Walt’s home, and all of Ray’s careful plans and thoughts go out the window, and an awkward silence settles over everything. He makes dinner, and they watch reality TV, and Walt tells him about the new levels of retardation reached by the officers today, and Ray smiles in all the right places, but everything feels wrong, and he’s not sure why.

It occurs to him, later on, that he’s waiting for Walt to crack, for some fucked up kind of proof that he’s not fine, because Ray’s not going to push him, but he’s never been patient, and Walt acting like nothing is wrong is making his skin itch. Walt falls asleep on the couch, and he’s too big for Ray to move, so he just covers him with a blanket and pads into the bedroom. The bed feels big and cold, and Ray doesn’t sleep, just tosses and turns all night, and when he eventually dozes off in the early hours of the morning, when he wakes up, Walt’s already gone, and there’s coffee on his bedside table, and Ray kind of feels like he’s been dropped into The Stepford Wives or something, because this is fucking surreal.

It’s like this for five days, and Ray really thinks he deserves some kind of award for patience or some shit like that, and he wonders how much longer Walt’s going to keep pretending nothing’s wrong. They still sleep in the same bed, and the sex is still really great, of course it is, have you _seen_ Walt recently, Brad’s been taking him surfing and he’s tan all over and his hair is this really great golden colour…

Ray swears he was never this gay before Walt. Walt worked his hick farmer magic on him, somehow Ray knows it. He wonders if Walt’s using the same magic to hide his issues.

Anyway. That night, it happens again. He wakes Ray up making these noises that sound like he can’t breathe, and the hairs on the back of Ray’s neck stand on end. Ray’s on the sofa, half covered with a blanket and he doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have done, because Walt is in the other room whimpering and thrashing, and then he starts to scream, and Ray’s stomach turns to water. He’s off the couch and in the other room in seconds, and on the bed with one hand on Walt’s chest and another in his hair as he gets as close to Walt as he can without lying on top of him, without smothering him. Walt’s eyes snap open, and a tear slides down his face as he struggles against Ray’s grip enough to knock Ray off the bed. He hits the floor and rolls, and he’s not hurt, but he makes a noise when he lands, like all the air got knocked out of him, and Walt blinks, and he’s back again, looking horrified.

Ray spends hours curled around him, reassuring him that he’s okay, and that he’s not upset, and no, really, Walt, I’m _fine_ , and by the end of it, he looks a little less haunted, but it’s six am and he has to be at the base at eight, Ray at work by nine, and neither of them slept more than a couple of hours.

They get up and dress silently, and Ray’s brushing his teeth when he hears Walt says ‘I think I need help,’ and Ray just closes his eyes for a second and breathes.

When he goes into the bedroom, Walt’s looking in the mirror and Ray comes up behind him, puts a hand on his shoulder and Walt turns and curves into him, one hand on the small of his back and the other between his shoulder blades. Ray rests his head on Walt’s shoulder and feels like everything’s going to be fine.


End file.
